Phenomenology of rats

At the Weekly Standard, Michael Warren reports on yesterday’s Obama administration briefing of the House on the deal for Bowe Bergdahl. It sounds like the rat-in-chief is now seeks refuge in desertion. Either Obama seeks to desert his own sinking ship, or he has located the bus under which he may throw the Secretary of Defense.

Defending the deal, both Secretary Hagel and Secretary Kerry have proved their importance to Obama’s Team of Nitwits several times over. Hagel’s availability for disposal under the Bergdahl bus may be his highest and best use, but you have to wonder what is happening here:

According to Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services committee, the Obama administration’s briefers told he gathered House members that the person responsible for the decision to make the deal was not President Obama but Chuck Hagel, the secretary of defense.

“Now wait a minute, are you saying it was Secretary Hagel that made this decision, or was this the president of the United States?” McKeon, a California Republican, said to reporters. “It was the president of the United States that came out with the Bergdahls and took all the credit. And now that there’s been a little pushback, he’s moving away from it?”

Warren adds this:

The administration’s claim that Hagel, not Obama, made the decision is at odds with what Hagel himself said on Meet the Press on June 1. “I signed off on the decision,” Hagel said. “The president made the ultimate decision.”

Consistent with McKeon’s commonsensical reaction, one has to think it would be difficult to extricate the rat-in-chief from the rosy Rose Garden scenario he orchestrated to celebrate the deal, which he has adamantly (if unpersuasively) defended on the merits.